Pictured: The team from VHI Healthcare collecting the Best Website – Large Company Award presented by Owen Buckley of Unicef.
Vhi won Best Website – Large Company at the Spider Awards 2026, in association with One4all, for its redesigned Vhi.ie, built around a simple principle: in healthcare, clarity is a responsibility, not a design choice.
Healthcare is one of the hardest environments to design for. It is deeply personal and emotionally charged. When people interact with healthcare services, they are rarely relaxed, patient, or willing to “figure things out”. More often, they are worried, time-poor, or unsure what comes next.
That is why we believe something quite strongly – in healthcare, clarity is not a design preference, it is a responsibility. The redesign of Vhi.ie was an opportunity to challenge that thinking and ask a bigger question: what should a healthcare website really do for people who rely on it?
For more than 1.23 million members, Vhi’s digital channels are now central to how care is accessed, cover is understood, and claims are managed. As demand for healthcare continues to rise across Ireland, the website has become more than an information source; it is part of the care experience itself.
Complexity is real. Confusion is optional.
Healthcare is complex for very real reasons. Care pathways are rarely linear. Needs to change quickly. Language is medical, financial and emotional all at once.
But our research surfaced a crucial distinction – complexity does not have to show up as confusion.
Members do not come to a health insurer’s website to admire its structure. They arrive with a situation, a symptom, a worry, a claim, or a next step. Yet, many healthcare websites are still designed around internal logic: policies, products and departments.
One of our clearest convictions going into the redesign was this: people should not need to understand the business of healthcare to take care of their health.
That belief shaped every decision we made.
Listening at scale and acting on it
We invested heavily in research, not to validate assumptions, but to challenge them. What mattered most was not the volume of research, impressive numbers are easy to generate, but the consistency of what members were telling us.
Several insights emerged repeatedly:
Members think in moments, not products.
They want to know if they are covered, where to go, what to do next, and whether they are making the right decision.
Confidence is as important as speed.
Fast journeys mean little if people leave unsure or anxious. The most effective experiences reassured people they were on the right path.
Language can either support or exclude.
Small changes in labels and structure had a disproportionate impact on understanding. When language became clearer, questions disappeared.
Digital self-service only works when it feels safe.
Members will self-serve when they trust the system not to trip them up. Clarity builds confidence; confidence enables independence.
Together, these insights pushed us beyond optimisation and towards simplification, a harder task, but a far more valuable one.
Building for how people think
“Healthcare is complex. Finding information should not be.”
That was not just a line; it became our design test. Rather than focusing on pages or templates, we rebuilt the site’s foundation: its information architecture. Navigation, structure and labels were redesigned around real user mental models, not internal categories.
This required difficult choices. Removing duplication. Letting go of familiar structures. Trusting evidence over instinct.
The outcomes were clear. People completed tasks more successfully, found information faster, felt more certain about their decisions, and needed less explanation along the way.
The site now does less talking and more supporting. When clarity is built in, help content becomes less necessary. Usability stops being a feature and becomes invisible infrastructure.
Digital as a strategic enabler
Vhi’s strong performance in 2025 reflects a deeper shift in how digital is viewed across the organisation. Digital is no longer just a servicing layer; it is a core enabler of Vhi’s evolution from insurer to health partner.
When the majority of claims are handled digitally, millions of everyday interactions happen online, and care is increasingly delivered through virtual channels, the website becomes part of the operating model, not just the front door.
The redesigned Vhi.ie supports this shift by making access to care clearer, pathways more obvious and digital touchpoints feel connected rather than transactional. It enables scale, supports prevention and reinforces a broader shift towards health and wellbeing, not just insurance.
Better digital experiences do more than reduce friction; they create the conditions for sustainable, member-centred growth.
Designing for the future of care
The redesign of Vhi.ie is not an endpoint. It is a platform.
As Vhi expands its care footprint, including services such as the Vhi 360 Health Centre Galway, the website plays a critical role in connecting physical care, digital services and ongoing support.
It helps members engage earlier, understand where to go and why, feel supported across channels, and build an ongoing relationship with their health, not just their cover.
The bigger idea
Trust is built through understanding. And understanding comes from designing with empathy, intent and the courage to simplify. That is the real work of digital in healthcare.
About the author: Sarah Timoney, Digital Product Manager, Vhi Healthcare
Read more: